Chicken McNuggets

Chicken McNuggets (introduced in June 1980) are a fast food product offered by the restaurant chain McDonald's. They popularized the chicken nugget, which had been invented in the 1950s, and are one of the most popular trademarked items on the McDonald's menu.

McNuggets, as they are commonly known, are small pieces of formed chicken that have been battered and deep fried. They are sold in packages of 4, 6, 10, and 20 (6, 9 and 20 in the United Kingdom). In Australia, they are also available in 3 packs in Happy meals and Heart Foundation approved Tick healthy meals. They come with a choice of various flavors of dipping sauce.

Product description

The Chicken McNugget is a small piece of minced chicken and mechanically separated meat held together with phosphate salts and some chicken skin. The pieces are coated with batter, lightly fried to set the batter, individually quick frozen, packaged, and sent to stores. At the McDonald's stores, the McNuggets are deep-fried and sold. According to McDonald's, Chicken McNuggets are made entirely of "white meat" as opposed to dark meat.

Dipping sauce options

Sauces vary by market. The United States market offers barbecue, ranch dressing, sweet n sour, honey, South Western BBQ, Spicy Buffalo, Tangy Honey Mustard. Other markets offer some additional sauces as per market demographics. These sauces are not always in addition, but are sometimes substitutions for other sauces on the menu. Sauces such as the American Chipotle BBQ sauce do not translate to other countries, and as such the sauce is the same but renamed smokey bbq. Other sauces available in different countries include crazy curry, tomato basil, sweet chili, , garlic, and jalapeño

History

In November 2003, McDonald's switched to using all white meat for McNuggets instead of the traditional combination of white and dark meat. This was heavily promoted as an effort to improve the item's flavor. McDonald's state that they use mechanically separated breast meat in the production of their McNuggets. A small amount of chicken skin is recovered with the breast meat.

At the same time that they stopped using dark meat, McDonald's announced that they were using less salt in the preparation of McNuggets. This was recognized as an attempt to make their products healthier. However, the sodium levels listed in McDonald's nutrition facts have actually increased: from 530 mg for 6 pieces between 2000–2002, to 670 mg for 2003–2005.

Chicken McNuggets vary from different countries. For example, in European countries a crumby breading is used, whereas in the North America the previously mentioned batter is used.

Advertising

Shanghai McNuggets were a sales gimmick used by the McDonald's Corporation during the mid-1980s. They were accompanied by a fortune cookie and a choice of sweet and sour, teriyaki, or hot mustard sauce. Shanghai McNuggets were discontinued shortly afterwards and are no longer available, although in the Summer of 1998 the McNuggets were packaged in Chinese food take-out boxes again to go along with their promotion of the Disney animated movie Mulan.

In the McDonaldland series of advertisements, Chicken McNuggets were anthropomorphised as the McNugget Buddies, rounded nuggets with faces and voices who usually came in groups corresponding to the amounts available on a McDonald's menu, appearing in a McNugget box, lined up like eggs in a carton.

As of July, 2007, a McNuggets rap has been used by McDonalds. The video contains two young men, one of them beatboxing while the other does a freestyle rap about McNuggets. The young men in the video are Fernando Sosa (beatboxing) and Thomas Middleditch. The video was directed by Matt Malinsky. All three are improv actors in Philadelphia.

Controversy

In 1984, James Oliver Huberty killed 21 people and wounded 19 others at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in what became known as the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre. Three years later, in 1987, his widow, Etna filed a USD$5 million lawsuit against McDonald's, claiming that the massacre was triggered by her husband's consumption of excessive amounts of Chicken McNuggets. She alleged that monosodium glutamate from the food interacted with the lead and cadmium that had built up in Huberty's body after 14 years as a welder. The claim was dismissed.

The 2004 documentary Super Size Me alleged that McNuggets were, at one point in time, made from sick and/or old chickens unable to lay eggs, and that they included chemicals such as tertiary butylhydroquinone (a phenolic antioxidant), polydimethylsiloxane (an anti-foaming agent), and other ingredients not used by a typical home cook. As of 2007, these two ingredients are still listed as possible ingredients of the vegetable oil that is used to fry McNuggets. Eventually it was senior engineer Ivan Martinez that decided to make the nuggets with all white meat.[1]

See also

• Chicken nugget
• Meat slurry
• Chicken McNuggets problem

Similar products sold by other QSR vendors:

• Burger King Chicken Tenders

References

• McDonald's South Africa, "Nuggets" retrieved from http://www.mcdonalds.co.za/background.html on 09-02-2007.
  
• McDonald's United States corporate website, Get the Nutrition Facts for a McDonald's Menu Item retrieved from http://app.mcdonalds.com/bagamcmeal?process=menuitems on 9-02-2007.
  
• McDonald's UK Corporate Website, "Fries and Dips" retrieved from http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ on 09-02-2007.
  

External links

• Ingredients list at McDonald's.com
• Nutrition facts
• McNuggets "Rap"